Sponsor a buoy and save a life

THROW the floata­tion de­vice and call for help! That’s the mes­sage as the NSRI ex­pands its award-win­ning Pink Res­cue Buoy cam­paign through­out the coun­try. The highly vis­i­ble buoys are sta­tioned at beaches, rivers and dams with the aim of pro­vid­ing emer­gency floata­tion at as many places as pos­si­ble where peo­ple swim. To date the pink buoys have been used in 13 suc­cess­ful res­cues, sav­ing 15 lives, five of which were chil­dren. With buy-in from cor­po­rates and busi­ness in our re­gion, many more lives could be spared. In sit­u­a­tions where ev­ery minute counts, the pink buoys should be used to pro­vide emer­gency floata­tion un­til emer­gency ser­vices ar­rive. The cam­paign is aimed at those in dan­ger of drown­ing with three main groups at risk: peer res­cue drown­ings, rip cur­rent drown­ings, and in­land drown­ings (rivers and dams). Peer res­cue drown­ings oc­cur when a by­stander, of­ten a friend or fam­ily mem­ber, at­tempts to res­cue some­one in trou­ble and ends up drown­ing in the at­tempt to help. Of­ten these drown­ings oc­cur ei­ther be­cause the at­tempted res­cuer in­cor­rectly es­ti­mates their swim­ming abil­ity or un­der­es­ti­mates the strength of the cur­rent or length of the swim. The graph­ics on the sign ad­vise some­one who wants to help not to en­ter the wa­ter, but rather to throw the floata­tion de­vice to the per­son in trou­ble while some­one calls for help. The board the buoy hangs on dis­plays the lo­cal emer­gency num­bers, and pro­vides a lo­ca­tion num­ber that call­ers can use to tell Sea Res­cue ex­actly where the in­ci­dent is hap­pen­ing. If you would like to con­trib­ute fi­nan­cially, you may sponsor an en­tire Pink Res­cue Buoy. Your spon­sor­ship will be printed on the board, in the form of a logo or a ded­i­ca­tion of your choice. The cost of the buoy and board is R1 500. For more in­for­ma­tion, to sponsor a board or to make a do­na­tion to­wards the cost of buoys, call Sea Res­cue’s Drown­ing Pre­ven­tion Man­ager, An­drew In­gram, on 082 9905977 or email an­[email protected]­es­cue.org.za